Shifty Little Thing
by Dark Witch the Fairy Lily
Summary: Dudley is asked to stop beating up his smaller cousin because she's a girl. Dudley doesn't. This sets off a hair trigger line of events that will change not only a female Harry Potter but her family forever. Fem Harry. Pre-Hogwarts. Slight floating timeline, easily missed. First in the Ingrid Potter series.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Considering all the times he'd tried to hurt her on purpose, the fact that Ingrid's cousin ended up nearly cracking a rib accidentally was almost ironic in retrospect. All the times Dudley had tried to pound her and that accident was what did it. Ingrid could remember the afternoon clearly because of the smarting rib, and because just before that her Aunt Petunia had slapped her for letting the toasted sandwiches meant for lunch burn. Aunt Petunia was busy that day, actually. She was the one who started the fight with Uncle Vernon, too.

At about twelve-thirty, when Ingrid was about six years old, on a sunny summer afternoon Aunt Petunia decided to make toasted sandwiches. "My Duddy needs good food," said Aunt Petunia, looking fondly at her pudgy son and ignoring expertly her stick-thin niece. Aunt Petunia had once said that Ingrid would never be large no matter how hard she tried; she seemed to have given up on that endeavor long ago.

Her peach organdy flower printed dress fluttered around her bony hips and white pencil legs as she bustled, business-like, around the kitchen, putting the sandwiches together and frying them. She carefully took out the mayonnaise, sliced roast beef, sliced cheese, mustard, and sourdough bread, using a different knife for each sauce, careful to wipe up every drop that landed on the counter with a paper towel even as she made the sandwiches. Aunt Petunia's brand of housewifery was a lesson in proud precision. Ingrid had wandered out into the kitchen to watch; Dudley was glued to the television set in the living room. They were the same age, but they didn't seem able to connect with any of the same things. Dudley enjoyed video games, Ingrid could sit outside for hours watching birds in a tree and imagining their chirping conversations with what Aunt Petunia called "a spaced-out look on her face"; the differences continued from there.

The reason she remembered Aunt Petunia's dress skirt and bony hips so well, her white pencil legs and knobby ankles, was because she was small enough that this was where her line of eyesight was. Aunt Petunia was not a pretty woman; she had a long face, her cheeks drawn in and her lips usually persed over crooked teeth, her neck was just that little bit too long to be considered natural and elegant. Yet she had a kind of rangy, handsome elegance to her, "Marlene Dietrich" as Uncle Vernon sometimes said fondly. Her blonde hair was always in a perfect, gleaming gold chiffon, not a stray out of place; her nails carefully filed and her hands lotioned and powder clean; her makeup as pristine as warpaint and her eyes like arctic, steely blue chips of ice.

All at once Aunt Petunia appeared to notice Ingrid watching her. She seemed, as always, irritated when Ingrid zoned out. "Watch the sandwiches for a moment," she said, throwing down her spatula unceremoniously on the kitchen counter beside the toasting pan. "Grab the stool and come here."

Hesitantly, Ingrid took up the stool almost as big as she was and hefted it over with effort before the stove.

"Stand on top of it."

Ingrid stood, ducking her head as if in some weird approximation of a Japanese bob.

"You know how to watch the stove, right?"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia." Aunt Petunia had begun teaching and assigning Ingrid chores - cooking, cleaning, and gardening - about a year ago. Ingrid had once made the mistake of asking why Dudley was not given chores. Uncle Vernon had cuffed her around the ear and told her that obviously it was because boys didn't cook and clean. Dudley would prove himself in other ways, by "working on providing things," the way Uncle Vernon did with his big business job - though what exactly Dudley was supposed to be providing at six years old, Ingrid had no idea. Also Dudley was their biological son, so - it was unspoken - he belonged here already, and had to do nothing to earn his keep.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia weren't being compensated for Ingrid. Whatever that meant. Uncle Vernon, who watched the news and said words like "compensated" a great deal, complained about it often.

"Very well, then," said Aunt Petunia now. "I'm going to go check on Dudley, and maybe bring him a snack. _Don't_ burn anything." Her heels clacked across the tile and out of the kitchen.

Ingrid took up the spatula and poked in what she felt was a brisk, businesslike way at the sandwiches a great deal. That seemed to be the thing to do when one was cooking something on the stove. The stove was, like everything else in Aunt Petunia's home, shining and pristine. Aunt Petunia scrubbed windowsills with her formidable collection of toothbrushes and polished the entire kitchen every evening before bed, vacuuming and dusting every two days.

Ingrid had often wondered which came first, Aunt Petunia's obsession with perfection or her home. The Dursleys - plus their niece Ingrid Potter - lived in a private gated community, an upper class Surrey suburb called Little Whinging. _Everything_ was perfect here. Stone ivy-climbing walls, proper English gardens, paved roads with lamp posts, long rows of spacious boxy white houses with shiny cars in the driveways filled with people with gleaming white teeth and lovely puddings and once-a-week maid service.

The Dursleys' house was "just moderate of decadent," a lovely term Aunt Petunia had once used to describe her home. Everything was white, from the high slanted ceilings and stainless walls to the kitchen and bathroom tiles, the counters, the lacy curtains, and the piled carpets. There was a massive red brick fireplace, a polished mantel piece, and very fine furniture. Aunt Petunia's collection of prized vases sat on various little end tables throughout the house, each vase filled regularly with fresh flowers from the flower beds in the front garden that Aunt Petunia tended herself. She would wear one of her big sunhats and her white gardening gloves and kneel out there in the front garden, or sometimes in the back garden to dig up weeds and keep the surrounding trees, the shed, and the flat green lawn smooth and clean. She always wore her denim dress for this, her bony white knees obvious; this was the closest she ever got to "casual."

"What on earth are you doing?!"

Ingrid was startled out of her daze and realized she'd been gazing absently out the kitchen window at the back garden. The sandwiches were burning, unnoticed, in their pan before her.

Aunt Petunia rushed right over, tugged Ingrid by the ear and pulled her down in front of her. Ingrid made a sound of pain. Aunt Petunia slapped her across the face. "What did I say?! What did I _just_ say?! I asked of you one thing: not to burn lunch!"

Ingrid tried to make herself smaller, shoulders hunched as she stared miserably at the floor. She didn't want to cry, as Dursleys despised tears, but traitorous drops welled up despite themselves. She felt useless. "Sorry, Aunt Petunia," she said softly. Her cheek stung.

"Go into the living room while I fix this mess." It was the last thing Ingrid wanted to do, face her much larger cousin Dudley in a vulnerable state, but Aunt Petunia's orders were not to be trifled with. She shuffled reluctantly toward the living room. "And stop shuffling!" Ingrid forced herself to walk more clearly. She entered the living room and paused hesitantly just inside the doorway.

Dudley had turned around from his television induced vegetable state, watching with a startling amount of focus as Ingrid entered the room. He saw her, the upset and fear painted across her expression, and a slow grin formed across his big, gleaming, red face. "Aww, the baby's crying again," he said gleefully in a high voice.

"I am not," said Ingrid immediately, frowning, though this was technically an untruth.

Dudley lumbered to his feet, his big mother-bought sweaters and pants somehow not making his humongous size any less threatening. "Do you want me to _really_ give you something to cry about?"

"No - Dudley - please -" Ingrid backed up half a step and then ran for the hallway.

"Toughen up already!" Dudley demanded, as though this was already a decided thing, a birthday gift he wanted that he was determined his parents would get for him. They were the same parroted words Uncle Vernon often said. Then his footsteps thundered across the living room and in a few great strides he had her pinned to the floor, sitting on top of her stomach. She could barely breath, gasping with effort.

"Your parents told you to stop hitting me," she forced out. This was true. Ingrid was small, thin, and wiry, and more than that, she was a girl. Good boys didn't hit little girls, didn't hit little sister figures - not even defective little sister figures like Ingrid.

Dudley paused, the grin fading from his face.

"You'll get in trouble," Ingrid gasped, chest heaving under the heavy weight.

This thought did not seem to have occurred to Dudley. A startled look came over his face - then it screwed up and he began wailing. He got off of Ingrid, which was some relief, but this was only to have a fit, throwing a tantrum. He fell onto the ground, flailed his fists and feet, screeched at the top of his lungs, writhed like an undulating reddish pink slug in wool on the floor.

Ingrid could not get away without being hurt, so she turned onto her side, curled up into a little ball, and stayed very still, trying to protect as much of herself as she could from Dudley's fists. Dudley loved purposeful punching and loved tantrums and Ingrid was usually the closest available child, so in this Ingrid was an expert. Dudley's fists and feet glanced off of her, and just as Aunt Petunia ran back into the living room, one limb hit Ingrid's side and she felt a hot knife of pain, letting out an involuntary screech.

"Dudley! Dudley, stop it!"

Aunt Petunia ran over, grabbing Ingrid hard by the arm and yanking her out of the way. "Move," she demanded, like a lifeguard who still had to get everyone else safely back into the boat. Ingrid backed up against the doorframe on her butt, still gasping and a bit teary eyed, but mostly just staring in blank horror at Dudley's writhing fit. During previous tantrums like these, Aunt Petunia had always just assumed that Ingrid had provoked Dudley and Ingrid had always just assumed that Dudley could stop whenever he felt like it.

But Dudley wasn't stopping. He was working himself into a right state, screaming at the top of his lungs, foaming white spit flying, and throwing his limbs all over the floor. His face and neck were the color of a tomato.

"Girl! Is it broken?" Aunt Petunia demanded for what was probably not the first time, knelt before Ingrid and glaring intently into her face.

Ingrid swallowed and felt her side. "No," she said, shaking her head. "Just hurts a bit. Bruise, probably."

Aunt Petunia nodded and turned back to Duddy, half standing as if not sure what to do. "Duddy," she said loudly over the screeches. "Duddy, would you like a treat? Duddy, you must calm down. Duddy -" She had gotten too close and Dudley socked her right in the stomach, he still screaming. Ingrid realized the gasp that followed had issued from her own lips as Aunt Petunia let out a breath and bent over, paling, pure shock on her face.

She stumbled away from her son. Dudley still hadn't stopped. Ingrid imagined him bursting a blood vessel and dying, her great and frequent tormentor, and then felt ashamed of herself.

"He won't stop," Aunt Petunia whispered. "He won't stop."

Later, after Dudley had finally calmed down and been moved to his room in the tense silence to physically recover from his horrible fit, after Uncle Vernon had come home from work, that was what Ingrid could hear Aunt Petunia saying to Uncle Vernon in the living room. "He wouldn't _stop,"_ Aunt Petunia repeated helplessly, as if unable to convey to her husband just what exactly had occurred while he was at work obliviously selling shipments of drills at Grunnings Co. "And now he's sick."

"I'm sure he was just upset, Petunia. Are you sure the girl didn't -?" Uncle Vernon had never trusted Ingrid. He seemed to always be looking in her for secret wells of "airy fairyness" and "oddness" and "flakiness." He also couldn't stand people who "didn't seem to have any spine." They were almost as bad for him as people who accepted poverty and mediocrity, and that was saying a lot.

"She was curled up on her side trying to protect herself from his blows - totally helpless. He nearly broke one of her ribs. He punched me in the stomach and he still wouldn't stop." Not even Aunt Petunia seemed capable of ignoring this, not even when it came to their precious Dudley. "It was - it was like he'd gone mad." Her tone shook slightly. "And besides, we've already told him not to hurt a little girl. She hadn't physically provoked him, so how else could she have driven him to do something like that?"

"Are you sure it's not -?"

"... Yes. Yes, I'm sure. I'd have noticed."

Ingrid was blamed for every odd thing that happened in her presence, sometimes even grounded to her cupboard over them. She was not allowed to talk about dreams, never allowed to watch cartoons; "funny ideas" were forbidden to her. It was as if her aunt and uncle thought she had some mysterious power over all things strange. Joke was on them. Teary, shy, timid, and absent-minded daydreamer or not, she'd never caused or considered a single strange thing in her life.

She lay on her camp bed inside the cupboard under the stairs, gazing up at a spider crawling along the ceiling. She was used to spiders, used to cleaning them out, used to dealing with all manner of creepy and menial items with quiet and calm matter of factness, having a cupboard as a bedroom. Spiders were itchy and ticklish when they got in her hair or moved along her neck in the cramped darkness, but that was about as bad as it got.

Dudley got an upstairs bedroom, as did her aunt and uncle, and there were two empty bedrooms besides. Ingrid supposed she hadn't earned a bedroom yet. Too much "compensation" still to make up for. This did have its disadvantages, but in this case she could hear her aunt and uncle talk in the living room across the hall the way Dudley could not.

"He was probably just being a boy, Petunia -" Uncle Vernon began.

"You didn't see him, Vernon. He's still having tantrums at six. This isn't normal."

"Well what would you like me to do?!" Ingrid imagined her uncle throwing up his arms in defeat, no small movement as he was a much larger and more pot-bellied version of his son, a dark rugby player gone to seed who wore straining black and expensive three-piece suits.

"I want him to see someone."

"You want him to see a _shrink?!"_

"... You don't have to put it like that. He's just… troubled by something. Maybe."

"My son is healthy and tough! He doesn't need a shrink!"

Ingrid listened in silent but growing surprise and alarm as an argument began. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, both so stern and firmly upper class but so indulgent of their son, had always seemed an entirely united front. She didn't think she'd ever heard them argue before. It was surprisingly disturbing.

She turned onto her side, squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears, tried to block the argument out. But she still heard it.

In the end, Uncle Vernon agreed to take his son to a single check up appointment with a "psychiatrist" - whatever that was. (Ingrid was pretty sure it meant "shrink.") But he didn't like it.

* * *

"Mummy, I don't want to go see some stupid doctor," said Dudley plaintively three days later, looking up into his mother's face dressed in what approximated for the unreligious Dursleys as his Sunday best.

"Smart boy," Uncle Vernon muttered.

"Oh, Duddy." Aunt Petunia was frowning in consternation, bent toward her son's level the way she never would have toward Ingrid's. Ingrid could actually see her waver and consider backing out for a moment - but then she rallied. "Don't worry. I don't like it either, but we just need to check something, okay?"

None of the Dursleys seemed particularly enthusiastic or convinced about the merits of the psychiatric visit. Ingrid was being left behind with a little old cat lady babysitter two streets over on Magnolia Crescent, Mrs Figg, and she was currently standing beside the tiny stooped woman with her bun of steely hair in the front doorway of her house.

"Be good," said Uncle Vernon to Ingrid, with an _or else_ expression, and Ingrid watched as Dudley punched his parents childishly, complaining loudly, on the walk down the front steps and to the car. "None of that!" she heard Uncle Vernon's voice call, and this seemed to change precisely nothing.

Ingrid looked around slowly to Mrs Figg, who was staring at her with a creepy, blank look. Her dark, dim house was covered in grouchy cats and knitted afghans and it always smelled like rotting food. Ingrid shivered. "Let me guess," she tried, smiling weakly. "Dead cat pictures?"

Mrs Figg gave her a ghostly stare, then turned around slowly in her slippers and shuffled back into the house. Ingrid sighed, squared her shoulders, and followed inside behind her for the usual parade of photographs sitting on the sofa beside mad old Mrs Figg.

Time always seemed to inch by very slowly in Mrs Figg's house. It was as if the clock there suddenly went more sluggishly than normal. So Ingrid was usually relieved in spite of herself when her aunt and uncle came to pick her up again, and was usually asked a plethora of demanding questions about her stay: How had it gone? (The correct answer: horribly.) How had she behaved? (The correct answer: in perfect, humble, and mute silence.)

But today, there was a loud pounding on the door and then Uncle Vernon stormed in. Mrs Figg jumped and dropped a picture of Mr Paws on the dirty, hair-stained carpet. Ingrid took one look at her uncle's face and wondered hesitantly just what she could have done wrong from so many miles away.

But for once, Uncle Vernon did not seem to be angry with Ingrid. "Get your things," he bit out. "We're leaving."

The ride back to number four, Privet Drive was very silent. Uncle Vernon's face was stormy as he drove. Aunt Petunia was sobbing into her hands. Dudley looked confused rather than outright upset. Ingrid was too timid to ask anyone what had happened.

They entered the house and all slowly sat down in the living room, as if just having suffered a great blow or an enormous shock. Ingrid, of course, knew nothing of what had happened, but picked up the mood of the room anyway. It was always that way. This was why she tried so hard to be the peacekeeper.

Finally, though, she couldn't hold her curiosity in any longer. "What…?" she asked softly, shoulders hunched and looking up underneath her ratty chin length bob of hair and her scruffy dark bangs. This was all she could manage, afraid of a terrible reaction.

Aunt Petunia looked up, and underneath her tears there was a deep well of frigid anger that Ingrid hadn't noticed before. "Dudley has been diagnosed," she said, lifting her chin almost defiantly. "He has Impulse Control Disorder, specifically Intermittent Explosive Disorder, with comorbid Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He had a tantrum in the doctor's office and that was what sealed the deal. He… the doctor… he saw… close up."

Ingrid didn't know what any of those things were, but they sounded bad.

Her confusion must have shown in her face because Aunt Petunia looked irritated with her. _That,_ at least, was normal. Aunt Petunia visibly forced herself to continue: "It means Dudley will always be very angry with a horrible temper and easy buttons to press and tantrums, like a toddler child, even as an adult. And he can't help it. And… and the psychiatrist said he hasn't reached certain milestones… that he has significant intellectual impairment for his age and trouble concentrating…"

Her voice trembled, her lip and chin shook, and she began to sob into her hands again. Ingrid looked down, feeling terrible, and sat in sad silence. She folded her hands in her lap. It sounded almost like Dudley had some sort of problem with his brain. Now she felt bad for all the times she'd hated him so much.

She imagined him still behaving like this as an adult, and she shivered. It was a horrible thought. He looked so normal now - his confused face, chubby pink weight, and smooth head of blond hair, his mother-bought wool sweater, looked so endearing on a child.

She tried to imagine him for the first time as a grown-up. This was a new thought for her. What if Dudley was just… always like this? What if he was just always angry and adored punching people? What if he never read books or got any smarter at all?

"Well I think it's bullshit!" Uncle Vernon had stormed to his feet, exploding at last, thick dark mustache rustling as he positively spat in massive-ruddy-faced fury. Ingrid's gleaming emerald colored eyes, her only nice feature, widened in surprise, both at the action and the word. "That damn man doesn't know a thing about my son! My son is fine! He's _fine!"_

"Yeah! I'm fine!" Dudley chirped up in his high voice, as usual parroting his father in more macho moments.

Aunt Petunia just sobbed harder. Perhaps she could see, now, what Ingrid did. Ingrid watched the whole scene worriedly, in a strange way an outsider.

"Petunia, that's enough!" Uncle Vernon barked.

Aunt Petunia shot to her feet in fury and hissed like a cat or a cornered snake. _"A doctor just told me my son is mentally disabled!"_ she shrieked.

There was a heavy silence as they stared at one another.

"What's that mean? Mentally disabled?" Dudley asked insistently. Ingrid had been wondering the same thing, but knew better than to ask. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia wouldn't hit Dudley, but they might have smacked her upside the head.

Uncle Vernon finally seemed to sag in defeat. Suddenly, Ingrid had never seen her uncle so _tired._ "It means," he said, "that things are going to have to change around here."

He turned to look at Dudley and Ingrid.

"Dudley is to stay living with us," he mandated. "None of that hospital shit. We will take care of him here, he will be… special education home tutored," he forced out the term, "in here, while Ingrid goes to year two at school. He will… take his meds." Another forced term. "And he will live with us.

"We all must be very understanding and caring of Dudley." Uncle Vernon's small dark eyes narrowed at Ingrid. "Including _you._ You'll be taking care of him as well."

Ingrid felt a kind of dread. She looked around slowly at Dudley… who was smirking smugly back at her. She saw it suddenly, now.

This was just an excuse to spoil Dudley even more. And no matter how terrified she was of his blows, his threats, his demands, and his shouts, she would now have to personally wait on him hand and foot. She felt terrible for him… but she just knew he would milk this for all it was worth, knew he would treat them all terribly and demand everything and claim it was because he was sick. And that was the rest of his life, and they _both_ knew Ingrid would just have to live with that. Her aunt and uncle would demand nothing less. Dudley also wouldn't have to do any complex schoolwork, something he'd been rebelliously dreading.

The years stretched out before her and she weighed the cost. Was it worth it, she thought, troubled, taking care of Dudley personally at home if she didn't have to deal with him when primary school started?

Ingrid would think back on this moment a lot, even years later. Only two children would have assumed that in the long term - the longest they, at least, could possibly imagine - Dudley Dursley had just won.

Her aunt and uncle must have better known the score.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Dudley's special education home tutor wore sweaters almost as ugly as the sweaters his own mother bought him. Though she would never say it out loud, Ingrid actually wondered privately if they went to the same shop. The tutor had cat's-eye glasses and long brown hair, she spoke in a soft little voice, and to top it all off her name was Miss Mellow.

Dudley would have a field day. Ingrid felt sorry for her.

The tutor appeared on their doorstep two days before Ingrid's official start of school. "I would just like to get to know Dudley a bit," she said in her soft, high voice, smiling hopefully, hands folded. "Really make certain he gets individualized care."

"Please, come in," said Aunt Petunia, smiling gratefully and stepping aside. On the surface, Aunt Petunia hadn't cried or yelled since that first afternoon, but she'd seemed more strained than usual. She always looked like she was trying to smile, or trying to seem annoyed, or trying to keep busy - but not really succeeding. She gave off an air of being troubled and distracted in the midst of anything, from making dinner to dusting a room. Ingrid watched, head ducked quietly but eyes closely observant and concerned, and stayed far out of her way. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon both seemed more irritable these days.

Ingrid knew it wasn't her - it was Dudley. She knew because from her cupboard she'd heard her aunt and uncle talking in the living room one night. "It's my side of the family," said Uncle Vernon, sounding exhausted. "I had an uncle who wasn't quite right. I just didn't think…"

And then there was a stiff, uncomfortable silence. Aunt Petunia's stiff lack of speech somehow said more than words ever could.

Ingrid had felt horribly relieved - there was no such history in Aunt Petunia's side of the family, where Ingrid and her deceased parents, the parents she didn't remember, had come from. Then she wondered at that reaction: was it a bad thing, to feel relieved? Did that make her a bad person?

Miss Mellow stepped now through the door and saw Dudley frozen on the staircase. "Ah. And are you _Dudley?"_ she asked, in the kind of bright, delighted, condescending tone that made Ingrid frown slightly and silently from her paused place in the entrance hall where she'd been vacuuming the living room rug before the doorbell had rung and she'd turned the vacuum off.

Dudley paused, eyes wide - then he bounded down the stairs, threw himself on the floor, and started kicking and screeching.

That wasn't a real fit, Ingrid knew. He was actually being quite clever. Dudley was testing the waters to see how much he could get away with around Miss Mellow. And maybe, just maybe, he was nervous.

He could certainly get away with a lot more now around his family - and Dudley had always been indulged, so that was saying something. Aunt Petunia fixed all his daily meds for him in a cup with a glass of water. Anything he wanted was given to him the minute he threw a tantrum, all his tantrums being cooed at with heartbroken fondness. His overabundance of toys now bordered on the mania of a hoarder. He usually sat up in his bed during the day while he called demands and others waited on him. He actually had a bell he rang when he wanted something from his bedroom, like the rest of the house were servants.

"Why is he confined to bed? He's not physically sick," Ingrid had made the mistake of pointing out once, and she'd gotten a cuff around the ear.

"Duddy's health is delicate!" Aunt Petunia had said, fiercely protective of her ailing son.

Ingrid hadn't meant anything along that vein. She thought it might actually be healthier for Dudley to get out in the fresh air and be treated like a normal human being, maybe even try for slightly more intensive schoolwork. But nobody had asked her, and nobody would.

So she slunk into the shadows and waited to see curiously what Miss Mellow would do when faced with a Dudley tantrum. Miss Mellow called repeatedly and surprisingly firmly, "Dudley. Dudley, you must stop this. Dudley, this isn't good." She stayed out of the way of his flailing fists.

When Dudley didn't stop, Aunt Petunia made to move forward. Miss Mellow held out a hand, calm. "Dudley," she said. "Very well then. We shall just stand here until you work yourself out."

"But -!" Aunt Petunia's blue eyes, usually so steely and icy, were wide and concerned.

Miss Mellow shook her head minutely. "It's fine," she said.

Dudley eventually slowed down, screaming himself out, and stopped his tantrum in surprise, looking around in confusion from the floor as he wasn't spoken to or appeased. "Very good," said Miss Mellow, kneeling down beside him, brisk and businesslike. "So here's how this is going to work."

Dudley just _stared_ at her.

"We are going to practice activities like painting, counting, and letters. We will also work on independent activities: shoe-tying, getting dressed on your own, and things of that nature. Sometimes we will go outside somewhere and talk about things like trees, leaves, and grass. How does that sound for starters?" She said it like all this was a great treat.

Dudley's vast, gleaming, reddish-pink face twisted and he lashed out with a fist. Miss Mellow dodged around the fist, seeming unsurprised.

"None of that," she said, frowning. "Or it's a time-out for you. So you don't like these activities? Well. I'll just have to investigate that and change your mind, shall I?" Now she sounded high-handed.

"You have a stupid name and you're ugly," said Dudley with force. Miss Mellow blinked.

"Well that's deeply unpleasant," she observed, like he was a specimen in a laboratory. "We'll have to work on manners."

"Mummy, I don't want to do this," Dudley whined, looking up at his mother with big eyes.

Aunt Petunia took Miss Mellow aside for a heated, whispered discussion. Ingrid couldn't hear what was said, but Aunt Petunia looked angry. Miss Mellow seemed unimpressed by whatever she heard in return.

Finally, looking as annoyed as if she had just lost an important battle - what exactly had Miss Mellow _said_ to get _Aunt Petunia_ to shut down? - Aunt Petunia walked back over to Dudley sitting plaintively on the floor.

"Duddy." She knelt down to his level, smiling weakly. "Unfortunately, this is just something you'll have to do for a while, okay? You must learn these things."

Dudley started up another tantrum. This one might have been a real fit, but if it wasn't that was deeply terrible, for Aunt Petunia rushed out of the room in tears.

Miss Mellow would begin coming three times a week, sometimes while Ingrid was at home. Miss Mellow, in spite of her high, soft, condescending voice and smiles and ugly sweaters, was never afraid of Dudley. She stood up to him, calmed him down, and taught him things, but she was never cruel.

Her eerie kindergarten teacher with a lab rat demeanor, however, kept her from ever becoming Ingrid's true or trusted friend. Ingrid was somehow wary around her, preferring to watch from a distance.

* * *

On the first morning of school, Ingrid got up early from nerves and packed her own lunch in the kitchen, standing on the stool as usual in the dim, growing early morning sunlight that filtered slowly over the back garden out the window. She never had very nice clothes, but today she had dressed independently and was trying to look her best. Somehow, the idea that she'd have a new place to make a first impression free of the Dursleys added extra weight to the importance of school.

When her aunt and uncle came out into the kitchen, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, her ready backpack and lunch beside her, swinging her feet. They looked her over disapprovingly but couldn't find anything to complain about, and she stayed quiet and said nothing in return.

"Your uncle will drive you up to the campus on the way to work," said Aunt Petunia. Ingrid knew without it being spoken that it was then her job not to cry or complain, and to find her way to the classroom herself. Just as the Dursleys still helped Dudley dress and prepared him food, they would have helped him find his classroom and let him cry. They wouldn't deliberately sabotage Ingrid, in part because it would make them look bad if she outright failed, but she would have no such assistance.

She got into the car beside her uncle and so began the long, uncomfortable, silent car ride to St Grogory's - her new school.

"Do well," said Uncle Vernon at last. "You're not…" He'd been about to say, _You're not stupid._ Ingrid wondered if he, like her, had then thought of his son and felt some strange sense of shame. He cleared his throat, clenched the wheel a bit harder, and continued driving.

"I'll be fine," said Ingrid at last quietly.

"Quite right you will," said Uncle Vernon, but absently, without his usual suspicion and forcefulness. He was still thinking of Dudley, Ingrid thought.

Then, to her surprise, Uncle Vernon continued talking to her. He usually never paid her much attention.

"What do you think of Dudley's new tutor? Miss…?"

"Miss Mellow?"

"I wasn't there. Stupid name," he added in a mutter.

"... Honestly?" said Ingrid hesitantly.

"Yes, girl, honestly!" he barked, impatient, and she jumped.

"Well." She put a hand to her mouth thoughtfully. "I think she's a good teacher for him and that's what's important. But… I also think she treats him like he's dumb, which maybe I guess she's used to doing with students, and I think she sees him more as… I don't know, as another student, or a patient, more than she sees him as… a person," she finished, watching her uncle carefully for signs of displeasure.

Uncle Vernon nodded, distracted, staring at the road ahead and looking troubled. "Alright. I… I guess that's something," he said finally, and Ingrid realized this was hard for him to say. Uncle Vernon was not used to settling, especially when it came to his prized son.

They drove up in front of the school building. There was a gate followed by a long concrete walkway, leading up to a massive concrete building, two vast stories but structured like an old fashioned school house. Of all things, it had a bell tower where the two roofs met in a point, and it had a chimney poking out of what had to be the cafeteria. Ingrid could see skeletal hints of playground equipment poking from around back.

"You have to go." Ingrid came back to herself and realized she had paused to examine her new place, sizing it up. "Do you… do you want me to go in with you?" She looked around in surprise. Uncle Vernon was gruff and reluctant. Perhaps he felt some weird sense of duty, since she'd apparently been at least a little helpful.

"No," she said quietly, feeling a new determination to figure it out herself. She didn't need charity; she could do it on her own. "I can find my own way. It's okay." Uncle Vernon had to go to work. He didn't have time to be showing her things.

Uncle Vernon looked relieved as she got out of the car.

"Be good," he said in his usual warning tone. That she'd slammed the car door shut and he'd vroomed away in a cloud of exhaust, leaving her standing on the sidewalk before the school building with her backpack on her back.

Luckily, she was far from the only student who was new today. All the years were accumulating, flooding the car park and the campus with cars, parents, and students, on this first day of the brand-new school year. Ingrid watched, still and uncertain for a few moments, her head ducked. She saw that most of the students with parents seemed to be her age, which did make sense.

She picked out a group of parents with new students and followed them from a safe distance into the school building, gazing around herself with shy curiosity. The chatter of older students and younger alike, cheerful and excited, colorful backpacks and book bags galore, rang off the linoleum floor and white concrete walls inside.

Down a hallway, following the hesitant, staring group of parents, and up to a blue door that she could see said 2B. Her heart gave a jump of relief. That was her classroom. She paused to make it seem like she hadn't been following anyone, and then went inside after her group.

The classroom was incredibly noisy. Loud and excited young students were yelling, bouncing off the walls and floor. The classroom was arranged into little rows of desks, a blackboard and a teacher's desk at the front. The play rug was deep blue and covered in a map of the globe, while bright posters full of letters and numbers lined the walls. Ingrid smiled, looking around herself in growing excitement, filled with the thrill of the bouncing, yelling students and talking parents in the room around her. The person who had to be the teacher, a young woman, was talking to a parent at the front by the blackboard.

Ingrid picked her way carefully across the room, dodging running and jumping students, and found her seat in the second row of desks. She set her backpack down and sat on the edge of her chair, looking in smiling excitement around her. For now, she was content just to watch the sea of color, rambunction, and noise.

"Hey! What's your name?"

Ingrid looked around. A group of girls was standing there, a curious and assessing brunette girl at the front. They all wore jangling bracelets and sparkly hair barrettes. The leader's expression reminded Ingrid of one of Mrs Figg's prouder and more potentially sour cats, the kind that could be purring one minute and claw you the next.

"Erm… Ingrid," she said, blinking in surprise.

"Ingrid. Do you like makeup?"

"I wouldn't know," said Ingrid uncertainly. "I think if my aunt ever caught me in her makeup, it would go really badly."

For some reason the girls laughed, not unkindly. "Your aunt?" said the girl. "What happened to your parents?"

"They died when I was one. Car accident," said Ingrid matter of factly. When the girls looked uneasy, she hurried to add, "Don't worry about it! I don't remember it happening. I just know that's where I got this."

She lifted her messy, ratty black bangs, pushing her short, practical hair aside, to show the distinctive lightning bolt shaped scar on her forehead.

"Wow…" The girls stared with wide eyes. "I bet that could go away with some makeup," the leader said knowledgeably.

"Maybe," said Ingrid, unbothered, lowering her bangs to cover the scar again - Aunt Petunia had always insisted. "I bet you look really pretty with makeup." She smiled shyly at the leader, eager to please. It was true enough. The girl was very pretty.

"Thanks," said the girl, smiling, and Ingrid could see that at last the girl had been won over. "You have nice eyes, very green and so exotic looking." A return compliment. Perhaps that was how this worked. "I was wondering about you, but you're alright. You can join our group. You mind if we take these seats?"

"No, go ahead!" said Ingrid quickly, not about to contest her new place in the social order, and the girls settled into all the seats around her, giggling and chatting.

When a boy ran up to Ingrid and laughed and pointed, saying, "Look at her! Why is she dressed so funny?!" Ingrid blushed right down to the roots of her hair because these were the best clothes she'd ever been bought. But the leader of the girl group jumped to her defense at once.

"I don't know. Why are you such a massive _prick?"_ she said snobbishly, and the other girls laughed unkindly. Ingrid's eyes widened at the awful word, but she was relieved to see the boy run away.

Nobody bothered Ingrid again. She was protected from then on by approving public opinion. She was "okay."

"Don't worry," said the girl who'd spoken, grinning. Ingrid must have looked nervous. "You'll know lots of cool words around here soon enough. I learned that one from my Mum and her boyfriend."

"I… look forward to it," said Ingrid, smiling shyly. She did want to fit in, and she was looking forward to seeing what school had to teach her.

The teacher clapped her hands and cleared her throat. "Quiet, please!" Ingrid realized all the parents had left. Slowly, children found seats and silence fell. With that, school began.

The teacher began class by taking roll call. "Potter, Ingrid!" she called, and Ingrid raised her hand shyly instead of shouting as some other children did. The teacher looked up neutrally, gave a single nod, and checked off her name on the attendance sheet.

They started out with letters, numbers, history, and science. Counting things using building blocks, reading simple books and writing out simple sentences and short stories, learning about the world around them, learning about nature. The teacher tried to keep it hands-on.

Ingrid noticed a lot of things during class even from that first day. She noticed certain kids who weren't going to do well. On the one hand were the rowdy kids who didn't seem to care about anything. On the other hand were the kids who raised their hands with loud voices every two seconds. In both cases, the rest of the class would exchange glances behind the person's back and roll their eyes, scoffing quietly.

Ingrid happily didn't fall into either of those pitfalls, to her utter relief. She was too quiet and shy to raise her hand much, but in a timid way she had the right answers and did her schoolwork well enough. Nobody seemed to have a problem with her, though she watched for one carefully, determined to change her behavior if it meant people didn't hate her the way they did at home.

During lunch she sat with relief in the cafeteria with the same group of girls she'd met before class had started. The cafeteria was wide and echoing, and Ingrid couldn't stop noticing _everything,_ fascinated by the people-watching opportunities at the plastic blue lunch tables around her.

"What are you looking at?" one girl asked at last.

"The older children," she admitted, looking at a table full of children who seemed in her tiny eyes close to teenagers. They were probably about ten, and that seemed very old and experienced indeed to six year old Ingrid Potter. "I wonder what it's like being them?"

"Yeah, they look so cool," another girl admitted as they all gazed at the older table enviously. There were a few sighs.

Then: "That guy is cute!" Giggles. Ingrid smiled in cheerful amusement, not disagreeing.

"I also feel bad for all the people who don't have anyone to sit with," Ingrid admitted, watching child after child pause with their tray, staring around the cafeteria with the kind of psychic pain Ingrid thought she understood all too well. She felt embarrassed and sorry for them, as if their pain was her own, the same as at home.

"Charity cases," the leader agreed, and Ingrid's lips tightened slightly but she said nothing and tried to let what she thought of as the Dursley veil cover her face. "Let's invite one over. Maybe Ingrid's right. Hey!" she called to a girl with sparkly purple glasses who'd raised her hand loudly a lot. "Want to sit with us?!"

During recess on the playground, the group all started out together. They cut and formed a big, giggling group in the middle of the line to go on the slide set on wood chips. Ingrid felt a leap of delight as she slid against the slight wind down the slide, but then somehow they all ended up going in separate directions, following different people and making more friends. Ingrid befriended a tomboyish girl on the monkey bars, and even grinned and teased some boys who were sitting on a part of the jungle gym throwing wood chips at people who passed below. They grinned back, appreciative. Then she ended up talking to all the people who were swinging beside her on the swing set, then all the people waiting for their turn on the swing, and by the end of recess she felt brave enough to make a cheerful comment to almost anyone she passed.

She sat with different people, chattering and laughing, for the second half of class, and over the next few days she would form several groups of friends that she could walk over to anytime she wanted. Despite her poor clothes, she seemed to be kind, friendly, quiet, and agreeable enough to be generally likeable. She did well in school but wasn't obnoxious about it, when phys ed started she was pretty good at that too - really good, even, at sports that involved quick reflexes and running, having a small and wiry form - and before long she felt comfortable at St Grogory's, with many at least more distant friends, groups that she flitted to from one to another. They would be her friends that year, and then in the next class she'd make new friends, and each time she got better at it. At being open, smiling, and friendly, if rather soft spoken - kinder than she was confident.

On that first day Ingrid agreed to walk home with the tomboyish girl, who lived in her general neighborhood. She used the girl's cell phone to call her aunt back at the house. "I'm walking home with someone," she said. "No one needs to come pick me up."

"Oh, good, we're all incredibly busy," said her aunt, sounding frazzled. "Can you start doing that all the time?" Ingrid looked at the tomboyish girl and mouthed the question, raising her eyebrows. The girl shrugged and nodded.

"Sure," said Ingrid into the phone. "I can do that." She felt brave today. She didn't even add the obedient 'Yes, Aunt Petunia' that she might have before.

"Good." Her aunt hung up curtly, terse.

Ingrid had a good time walking home with her new friend. It was nice, walking through clean, sunny Little Whinging amid hordes of other released students, feeling independent. The girl agreed to show her back to Privet Drive, "since this is your first time walking home and all," she added agreeably.

Ingrid finally found her street, smiling and parting ways with the girl there. "I've just _got_ to take you bike riding at my place," said the girl in shock. "I can't believe you've never been!" Dudley had been bought a bike but Ingrid hadn't, and she hadn't been bought swimming lessons either. "Come home with me tomorrow. We have a blow-up kid's pool for summers and it's still up, so I can show you swimming, too."

"That'd be great," said Ingrid, smiling. "As long as I'm home for chores, I'm sure my aunt and uncle won't miss me."

"Great!" The girl beamed and left, back toward her own block.

Ingrid squared her shoulders. Suddenly, she was all too aware of how nerve wracking her own home was - the sheer dread of it. She walked slowly, trudging, losing energy, back toward her own house.

She opened the front garden gate and walked down the pathway. The perfect house swallowed her tiny form up like a dark, open mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Ingrid was frequently enlisted in shifts taking care of Dudley while at home.

One day, she mounted the stairs slowly and entered his bedroom carrying a tray of soup with the deepest suspicion. It truly was a hoarder's room by this time; huge piles of brightly colored, expensive toys were crowded in there and stacked everywhere, to the ceiling. Dudley, who got more massive and ruddy-faced by the day, lay swathed in pajamas in his massive bed, the bell next to him, lying like an invalid and expecting to be waited on. Or rather, like a very smug, evil little invalid.

Miss Mellow had, like Ingrid, gone up against this. She said Dudley needed to expend his energy by running around outside and find things to occupy his mind besides the television and video game console set, constantly on, across the room from his bed. But not even Miss Mellow had gained any headway here. Aunt Petunia had put her foot down.

"You can't tell me my son's sick and then expect me to treat him like he's well!"

Dudley must have heard the shouted words from all the way upstairs in his bedroom, because he'd taken to repeating them in his high voice. "They can't tell me that I'm sick and then treat me like I'm well!"

"That's right!" Uncle Vernon would add fiercely, pounding whatever was nearest with his fist. "Speak up for yourself, Dudley!"

Unsurprisingly, Dudley's tantrums and demands just got more ferocious and childish by the day.

Ingrid was slowly moving further away from him; she could feel it happening. She could barely remember a time, now, when she and Dudley had been on the same level. There were memories, vague shadow memories, which she would retain into adulthood: of she and Dudley being on the same level of maturity, of him chasing her around determined to roughhouse with her in spite of her size, of Dudley seen as simply a large, growing, rambunctious child instead of a giant, temperamental, overweight baby. She had a few clear memories from that time.

But mostly the first big turning point in her life that she could remember had been the week of Dudley's diagnosis.

Ingrid was so different. She could eat all she wanted now that Dudley ate in his room and was no longer at the table to steal her food. She was allowed to watch what she wanted on television, surfing the channels bored on the sofa, as long as her aunt didn't catch her watching anything too cartoonish or imaginative, and occasionally she browsed through Dudley's old computer and surfed the Internet. She saw his old child's stuff on his desktop and got mixed, sad feelings, so she didn't do it very much. And of course she enjoyed imaginative television and the Internet at friends' houses, just as she enjoyed swimming or riding around on their bikes. They introduced her to video games.

She tried to see what Dudley saw in more digital forms of entertainment. Try as she might, she could never find that magic.

Ingrid much preferred reading stories - especially daydreamy romances that made her sigh out of windows - or drawing pictures in school, imagining things and talking to people, and she loved playing around outside with her friends. She grew into a slim, spry, flushed young girl, still rather small but no longer puny and stick-skinny. Her friends came to laugh good-naturedly over her poor clothes and her short, messy black hair. The scar, hidden by her bangs, never bothered anyone anymore. No one asked any longer to come to her house and see her room, as they knew they'd never get to - she turned down every request, wanting no one to see her cupboard-bedroom or her family, a family she had realized was dysfunctional in comparison to her friends' homes.

The first time she'd ever gone to somebody's house and stayed there, it had been the tomboy's in year two. She'd stared around herself, paralyzed in surprise, as everyone said such nice things to each other, as parents asked the children if they'd like to play outside, if they'd like some snacks.

"Is your family always like this?" Ingrid had whispered to her new friend at last.

"Oh, yeah," the girl laughed. "They're all so crazy! I guess all families are."

 _You're lucky,_ Ingrid had wanted to say with distinct envy, but she couldn't have without explaining her own situation. And that she would never do - out of fear of her aunt and uncle, but also perhaps out of a weird sense of pride. She would learn as the years passed that most families were like that - loving, friendly, helpful, conversational.

It was all very strange at first. It took some getting used to.

Ingrid just kept on growing. She grew intellectually at a much faster rate than Dudley, gained independence walking around her neighborhood, learned more about the world around her from friends and school and field trips, became fit during phys ed and play times, and she matured emotionally as well, especially as she spent so much time out from underneath the thumb of the Dursleys. She was still quiet but a bit more stubborn, no longer quite as timid and hesitant as she used to be.

It was a work in progress. But Dudley was increasingly seeming like a regressing work, or a work that had never been started at all. It had taken Ingrid a while to figure out the problem: at heart Dudley was still five, and a very temperamental five at that. His mother now slaved over him, his father letting Dudley take up all of his time whenever he got home from work.

Ingrid was largely ignored, and that was how she preferred it. That was, she was ignored except for those occasions when she was enlisted to help Dudley. Like today, bringing him his tray of soup upstairs.

Cautiously, eyes narrowed, she set the tray of soup down on his bed. He smirked gleefully at her, tiny blue eyes dancing in his massive pink face. "Go turn the telly off and come back to me."

Ingrid sighed. She knew this game. She walked over and switched off the television. Then she came back to Dudley.

Sure enough: "Turn it back on again. Then come back to me."

Ingrid repeatedly, silently followed his orders, becoming increasingly irritated as he had fun ordering her to do all sorts of pointless things all about the room. She told herself Dudley couldn't help it - he was treated like a giant, angry, helpless infant, and anyway, he'd never been quite right. But finally, on the tenth order, Ingrid didn't move from beside the bed.

"Dudley," she said, "I think you should eat your soup before it gets cold."

She tried to keep her tone light and teacherly. A fat lot of good that did her. She probably just reminded him of the by now much-hated Miss Mellow, his only form of discipline and his constant, humiliating reminder of all the intellectual things he couldn't do.

Dudley lashed out in a fit, punching her and sending both her and the soup flying. At some point Dudley's fits had stopped being acts altogether, and they happened a lot. Ingrid landed on the floor and the first order of business became moving as far away as possible from Dudley Dursley. A tantrum had started up again.

She was halfway across the room on her butt when Aunt Petunia burst in. "Duddy!" she cried, horrified. She turned furiously to Ingrid. "What did you do?!"

"I told him to eat his soup before it gets cold!" Ingrid protested.

"How rude and insubordinate!" Aunt Petunia grabbed Ingrid by the arm and dragged her painfully, struggling, out into the hall. "Stay there and I'll deal with you later!"

The door slammed shut. Ingrid could hear Aunt Petunia cooing at the raging Dudley inside.

She crouched on the floor, waiting with horrible dullness for whatever punishment Aunt Petunia had in store. Ingrid felt bad, despite herself. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon always managed to appease Dudley. Why couldn't she? Was she just too impatient?

Aunt Petunia walked into the hall, clicking the door shut quietly. In the shadows of the hall, her tall stature and the glint in her eyes were deadly.

"Dudley doesn't understand things like that," she said quietly, and somehow the quietness made her tone more dangerous. "We mustn't upset him. We must just do as he asks."

Ingrid stood. "But he could understand things like that," she insisted, "if we just -"

Aunt Petunia shrieked and slapped her. Ingrid screeched and ducked her head, curling in on herself as Aunt Petunia slapped her silly, over and over again. Finally, Aunt Petunia had her fill and with one last little frustrated scream she stormed away from the landing.

Ingrid stayed crouched there, tears and snot dirtying the still-pristine carpet in the still-perfect house.

It was the beginning of a kind of end, though Ingrid wouldn't realize that for a while longer. It was the end of a time when the Dursleys treated Ingrid as they always had before.

* * *

Her first close friends were gained over a long period of time, one after another. For the first time as she grew, Ingrid learned what it felt like to have school friends who stayed, even as the years passed.

Willem and Wanda came first. Small, serious, bespectacled twins, they mostly kept to themselves and Ingrid wouldn't have met them if they hadn't been assigned to the same school project.

As it was, she sat down with them in a group and tried for a smile. "So - what do we want to do for the poster?" Wanda was reading a book. "What are you reading?" Ingrid added, trying to be friendly.

Wanda held up a manga volume's open cover silently.

"What is it about?" Ingrid tried next.

Wanda's eyes widened. She took a deep breath - and began spitting out at fast, excited speeds a full ten minutes on all the reasons why the manga she was reading was simply the best thing on planet earth.

"- and the character relationships are so complicated, and their art is beautiful, and, and, and these two _totally_ belong together!" She pointed firmly at two pretty boys in a page of the volume.

"Wanda, she looks overwhelmed," Willem observed dryly.

Ingrid was indeed smiling in bewilderment. "Oh, it's - it's fine," she said shyly.

"Anyway - for the poster. We should do some research on the culture of the country we're creating the ad for," said Willem with what Ingrid would learn was his trademark seriousness. "If we include some cultural additions, we'll probably get a better grade."

"Okay," said Ingrid, returning his seriousness in equal kind.

So they met at the school library after school and began researching different cultural aspects on the country of Italy at a small, round table. "We can't just draw a bowl of spaghetti," Willem said. "It would be -" His nose wrinkled as he searched for the right word.

"Cheesy?" said Ingrid, wincing.

"I was going to go with offensive," said Wanda.

Willem and Wanda slowly warmed up to Ingrid as she proved to be a good, helpful, and interested researcher. They slowly moved from the research project to other forms of homework. Willem took out his maths book and started doing problems.

"I didn't know we had maths homework," said Ingrid in surprise.

Willem looked up through his gleaming glasses. "We don't," he said in faint surprise. "They're extra problems at the back of the book. I do the maths and science parts for fun."

"Wow. That's dedication. I wish I had something I was that passionate about," said Ingrid enviously.

Willem was hard to read as he stared at her. Then he pushed his glasses back up his nose and returned to perusing the text. "I'm sure you'll find something," he said matter of factly.

Ingrid wished she shared his confidence in her own uniqueness. As it was, she was just pretty good at a bunch of general things.

On their way out, Wanda checked out a brand-new book from the library. "I need to add to my giant stack of reading material," she said matter of factly as they strode out of the library.

"Hey." Ingrid turned around. "Do you guys want to eat lunch with me tomorrow?"

"You must have noticed we always sit alone," said Willem clinically.

"That doesn't mean we want company," said Wanda.

"Besides, don't you always sit with more… popular people?" said Willem.

"I sit with a lot of different people," said Ingrid. "And I'm not offering out of pity. If we hadn't hung out together, I wouldn't have asked."

Wanda and Willem blinked as they seemed to realize they had indeed been hanging out with someone. They looked at each other. "Very well," said Willem at last. "Let's try it."

The whole thing ended up working out quite nicely. Ingrid wasn't loud or forceful, and she let them be themselves without trying to copy herself into being just like them. Soon Wanda and Willem were her silent followers, holding their books and guarding her solemnly on either side around the school.

It wasn't as simple as Wanda and Willem being Ingrid's lackeys - the friendship was more equal than that - but that was how people took it.

"Look, Ingrid's got her pity cases again," a boy mocked once in the school hallway. "She's got the nerds with her!"

Wanda flushed like she was about to cry, her trademark arrogance failing for a moment. Willem clenched his jaw and stared hard at the floor like he was trying to bore a hole through it. Ingrid looked around to glare at the boy who'd mocked them, clenching the handles of her backpack reflexively.

Suddenly, exactly with the movement, the boy's shirt tightened and tied around his waist, then flew up over his head revealing a skinny little chest. Everyone in the hallway started laughing and the boy fled in embarrassment.

"Whoa," said Wanda, as Willem looked fascinated. _"Weird."_

Ingrid kept silent, slightly uneasy, staring after the fleeing boy. It was weird. She was good at hiding them from her aunt and uncle these days, they were so busy with Dudley and she'd become so expert at keeping possible stressors from them, but those weird happenings she used to get locked in her cupboard for as a small child? They'd never stopped happening. Clothes she didn't like shrunk, haircuts she didn't like grew back absurdly quickly, when she felt threatened she was occasionally thrown into the air out of harm's way, and people who humiliated her had a mysterious habit of having something equally embarrassing happen to them. The boy at school whose freckles had bulged and turned purple was rather memorable, as was the teacher who'd mocked her in class and then had her hair suddenly turn blue and fly off her head, revealing itself to be a wig.

Letters would be sent home and she would rip them up on the walk back. She gave the house phone as the Dursleys' phone number and expertly intercepted any incoming school calls in a false voice while her aunt and uncle were busy and hassled with their son. Other things, they weren't around for and she just… never told them about. Still other things she told little white lies to them about. "These are hair extensions from a friend." "That skirt shrunk in the wash." She knew they hated strangeness and didn't trust her entirely, and she was afraid of being locked in her cupboard again. More than that, she'd become increasingly afraid of their _violence_ \- stress was not doing wonderful things for the Dursleys' tempers.

She didn't know why these strange things only ever happened around _her._ Because she wasn't causing them. She couldn't be.

* * *

Her next close friend came in the form of a girl named Alice - a quiet, sullen girl who wore lots of black and sat in the corner drawing and painting a lot. Other students snobbishly called her "a hipster" or "a beatnik." Teachers sarcastically called her "a suburban teenager before her time."

Ingrid felt rather sorry for her - not because she was an artist who preferred quiet and solitude, but because other people chose to judge her just on that account.

One day, the teacher told them to get in groups again, of four this time. Alice, to the group's eternal surprise, made a beeline straight for Ingrid, Wanda, and Willem. "Hey," she said. "Can I sit here?"

"Do you promise to do the work?" said Willem before Ingrid could speak.

Alice scowled. "Just because I pretend to be disinterested doesn't mean I am. Of course I'll do the damn work," she said, when Willem continued to stare at her. At last, he nodded and went back to his papers.

"Forgive my brother," said Wanda. "He can be kind of an ass."

"Of course you can sit with us," said Ingrid, smiling apologetically, and Alice plunked herself down gratefully into a seat beside them.

"Do you two always let him steamroll all over you?" Alice asked next.

Wanda glared frigidly. "It's more complicated than that," said Ingrid, frowning defensively.

"Uh-huh," said Alice, surprisingly observant. "Sure." She sighed, rolling her head back. "So what are we doing?"

"Identifying leaf pictures," said Ingrid.

"Fascinating," said Alice.

"There are worse things we could be identifying," said Ingrid, starting to get passive aggressively irritated.

"Like what?"

"Poop," Wanda offered.

Alice snorted, but smiled almost despite herself. "True," she admitted. "Hey." She turned to Ingrid. "Your name is Ingrid, right?"

"Yeah," said Ingrid, puzzled.

Alice nodded. "It's a cool name," she offered. "I've always thought so. And that leaf is from an oak tree." She pointed. Even Willem looked up in his surprise. "What?" She shrugged. "I'm an artist. I have a good eye for detail."

Alice ended up being a surprise invaluable member, and Willem by the end treated her with warm respect, Wanda and Ingrid with gratefulness - she named several things they would never have gotten.

"Hey, not that I'm complaining, but why did you come over to us?" said Ingrid curiously at last.

With typical bluntness, Alice said, "Because you didn't look like a bunch of popular, annoying, perky people."

"... Thanks," said Wanda. "I think."

That might have been the end of it if later at lunch the next week they hadn't seen a bunch of pitying popular girls surround and chatter at an increasingly annoyed Alice, who had been enjoying her table alone. Finally, deadpan, she stood up, grabbed her lunch and her sketchpad and walked straight away, ignoring their shrieks in a manner that was positively awe-inspiring for Ingrid.

As the cafeteria stared, she plunked herself down at Ingrid, Wanda, and Willem's table. "I swear to God, you guys are the only not-annoying people in our class," she muttered, and returned to her sketchpad. Wanda shrugged and returned to her book, Willem to his lunch. Ingrid suppressed a smile, and returned to her own lunch as well.

Alice sat with them that day, and for every day thereafter. Here, amongst other people, she was safe from any of what she called "surprise niceness attacks."

* * *

But Chloe was perhaps the most unexpected addition to Ingrid's close group of friends.

She was the new girl one day in class. "Students," said the teacher, "I would like you all to treat Chloe with respect and kindness."

"Fat chance there," Alice muttered. Willem smirked and Wanda snickered.

"Potter!"

"Yes?" Ingrid asked, eyebrows raising with what Alice called her Helpfulness Face.

"Please show her around school the first day."

Ingrid's entire group of friends went with her. They always did. Somehow, though Ingrid was soft spoken, she seemed to be the wheel around which all her other friends revolved. So they walked around school after her, looking bored, as she showed Chloe where everything was with what she tried to make a good amount of compassion.

"Show her who hangs out with who," Alice suggested at last. "That's actually important."

"Important?" Wanda questioned. Willem sighed.

"Hey! It's not like I want it to be," said Alice defensively. "That's just a fact."

"I suppose it would be helpful," Ingrid mused. "Alright. Come with me. I'll show you the playground social hierarchy."

"That'd be nice," said Chloe, a tall blonde with a ponytail and the amused languidness of a cat. "I always find a way to ingratiate myself, but it'd be good to have a head start. Careful, honey," she told Alice smoothly, "if you roll your eyes any farther into the back of your head, then where will you be?"

Alice stared in honest surprise. "Having to get a damn eye transplant," she said at last. Ingrid smiled to herself as Chloe laughed.

"Being fashionable and popular isn't a crime," said Chloe smoothly. She was dressed with the utmost sophistication. "Neither is being fabulous and stepping on all those who aren't. You guys are okay, though," she added thoughtfully, to the twins' utter disbelief.

"Thanks," said Ingrid, smiling.

"So you seem to be the head of the group. Got your own posse?" Chloe added slyly.

"It's not like that," said Ingrid, for what felt like the thousandth time.

"Well of course it's not. I can see that," said Chloe, surprised they didn't already understand. "But you should totally fake it to other people like it is. Up the social ante for everyone involved. Popular people always travel in posses. And they all laugh at the same things together. Appearance is crucial.

"Don't tell me you don't want to be popular, by the way," she added as the twins opened their mouths. "I know it's a lie." Wanda and Willem blushed and their mouths closed again.

Politely skeptical, Ingrid added, "Well, you'll have to teach me more about all this popularity know-how."

"I'd be glad to," said Chloe, grinning. "Now let's stop by the after school pamphlets board on our way to the playground. Lots of running and aggressive sports have my name on them."

Ingrid looked around at all her friends and thought that they had such distinct senses of themselves. She envied them that.

Chloe became Ingrid's willing wingman. She was the one who informed her what was good to do for the group's reputation and what wasn't. Slowly, outside her own home, Ingrid became more confident and skeptical, more socially savvy and less passive aggressive - in her own quiet way. Chloe called herself Queenmaker.

Her group of rebel outsiders became an established group in the school hierarchy. At some point, as each friend rubbed off on her in different ways, it truly did become her group. They sat together, ate lunch together, and moved through the playground together.

Meanwhile, at home it was so much different.

Ingrid kept her head down and stoically and silently, with a slight frown, tried not to be bothered by what was going on in the house around her. Her bedroom was still a spidery cupboard, her clothes awful, her chores and Dudley-care assignments hadn't lessened… but Dudley was becoming increasingly hard to deal with, and her aunt and uncle were becoming increasingly harsh and vicious.

Perhaps because of all this pressure, one night Ingrid had a very strange dream.

She was ducked underneath a table, the wood slab hiding her being hammered on all sides by giants looming up above the table. Dudley was nearby, being held down by a metal instrument labeled _Doctor,_ being increasingly constricted and increasingly struggling to get out. "Dudley!" she called, upset despite herself, because at heart he was still her cousin.

Then her friends were there, tugging her away in the opposite direction.

She jumped into a getaway car after them, looked down, and saw a real, live green snake writhing in the seat next to her. She shrieked and woke with a start in her cupboard.

After a few shaken minutes, she rolled over and tried to shrug it off. Ingrid's dreams had always been very vivid and kind of weird. It probably didn't mean anything.

Yet the memory remained.


End file.
